Black Mental Health and Wellness

Black History Month with Books for Black Kids

Black History Month with Books for Black Kids: Black Mental Health and Wellness

Black Mental Wellness Day, which was held on February 22nd this year, was created to address the challenges faced by the Black community in improving mental health and wellness.

As such, this edition of BHM with BFBK is dedicated to Black mental health and wellness, both with practical guides and through personal and fictional stories of survival.

For more books about mental health, visit the Books for Black Kids directory: Mental Health

If you’re looking for a Black mental health professional and located in Illinois or Indiana, check out Nave Wellness Center at navecenter.com.

Based in Frankfort, IL, in the south Chicago suburbs, Nave is founded by a Black woman and serviced by Black therapists and psychologists.

Books listed here:

📚Healing Racial Stress Workbook for Black Teens: Skills to Help You Manage Emotions, Resist Racism, and Feel Empowered by Jessica S. Henry, PhD; Farzana T. Saleem, PhD; Dana L. Cunningham, PhD; Nicole L. Cammack, PhD; and Danielle R. Busby, PhD

📚The Black Family’s Guide to Healing Emotional Wounds by Nijiama C. Smalls and Shamon D. Smalls

📚Ab(solutely) Normal: Short Stories That Smash Mental Health Stereotypes edited by Nora Shalaway Carpenter and Rocky Callen

📚The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health: Navigate an Unequal System, Learn Tools for Emotional Wellness, and Get the Help You Deserve by Rheeda Walker, PhD

(Also includes a workbook)

📚The Color of Hope: People of Color Mental Health Narratives edited by Vanessa Hazzard and Iresha Picot

📚Raising Resilient Black Kids: A Parent’s Guide to Helping Children Cope with Racial Stress, Manage Emotions, and Thrive by Erlanger A. Turner, PhD

📚My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem

📚Maybe I Don’t Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery by David Harewood

📚Self-Care for Black Men: 100 Ways to Heal and Liberate by Jor-El Caraballo

📚The Racial Trauma Handbook for Teens: CBT Skills to Heal from the Personal and Intergenerational Trauma of Racism by Dr. Támara Hill, LPC

📚I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying: Essays by Bassey Ikpi